TEL AVIV, ISRAEL--(Marketwired - Sep 13, 2016) - Cato Networks, provider of the world's first software-defined and cloud-based network with built-in enterprise security, today announced that it has raised $30M in a series B funding round. The financing was led by Greylock Partners, with participation from Singtel Innov8 and existing investors U.S. Venture Partners (USVP), Aspect Ventures and the company's founders, Shlomo Kramer and Gur Shatz. The funding will allow Cato Networks to offer its cloud-based network security as a service (#NSaaS) solution, the Cato Cloud, to the global market, bringing the cloud's transformative power to networking and security.
"Cato Networks is at the forefront of a significant shift in networking and security infrastructure. By combining network cost savings and network security infrastructure elimination, Cato is leading a cloud-based transformation in networking and security, mirroring the way cloud has redefined all other pillars of the IT infrastructure including applications, storage and computing," says Jerry Chen, Partner at Greylock Partners and Cato Board member. "These market dynamics, coupled with the extensive industry experience and expertise of the Cato team, make us extremely excited about the future potential of the company and the impact it can have on networking and security."
Today's funding round, which is Cato Networks' second after securing a $20 million series A round in June 2015, underscores a growing realization that the cloud will alter the way that enterprises address networking and security. This is already occurring in the marketplace, as organizations look to address burdensome network and security complexity.
"UMHS is spread across 13 locations in North Carolina, connected by a combination of firewalls, Internet and MPLS links. We looked for ways to streamline our IT infrastructure, cut costs and complexity, and improve security," said Leslie Cothren, Director of IT at UMHS. "We deployed Cato over a period of 4 weeks and were able to eliminate 5 physical firewalls in our remote locations. The Cato Cloud provides us with both WAN connectivity and Internet security as well as better visibility and control over our distributed environment. We no longer need to manage separate physical boxes at every location or deal with refreshes, patches or capacity upgrades. We plan to extend the deployment by moving to Internet-based connectivity in all offices and connecting them to Cato."
"Cato offers a totally new way to cut the cost and complexity of legacy, on-premise networking and security solutions by delivering them as a holistic, agile and scalable cloud service," says Shlomo Kramer, co-founder and CEO of Cato Networks. "We aim to strengthen security posture with an agile network security platform that can scale to support any business need and rapidly adapt to emerging threats. Cato is paving the way for a new, scalable and simplified networking and security platform for enterprises of all sizes, and offers lucrative opportunities for channel partners in the networking and security domains."
Cato Networks was recently listed as a sample vendor in Gartner Analyst Greg Young's report, "Hype Cycle for Infrastructure Protection, 2016," in the firewall-as-a-service category written by Jeremy D'Hoinne.
"Firewall as a service (FWaaS) is a firewall delivered as a cloud-based service or hybrid solution (that is, cloud plus on-premises appliances). The promise of FWaaS is to provide simpler and more-flexible architecture by leveraging centralized policy management, multiple enterprise firewall features and traffic tunneling to partially or fully move security inspections to a cloud infrastructure," said Jeremy D'Hoinne, a Gartner analyst. "FWaaS offers a significantly different architecture for branches or even single-site organizations. It also offers greater visibility through centralized policy, increased flexibility, and potentially reduced cost by using a fully or partially hosted security workload."*
Major benefits of utilizing the Cato Cloud include:
- Elimination of distributed networking and security appliances, and drastic reduction in the cost and complexity of buying, deploying, upgrading and patching them
- Reduction of MPLS connectivity costs by dynamically offloading internet and WAN traffic to affordable and resilient internet links
- Direct access to the internet at all remote locations, without deploying a dedicated on-premise network security stack
- Ability to leverage an affordable, low-latency and global WAN between enterprise locations
- Enforcement of a unified policy across remote locations, mobile users, and physical and cloud infrastructure without using multiple point solutions
- Strengthened security posture with an agile, scalable and adaptable network security platform
"With the general availability of the Cato Cloud service and the rapid global deployment of the Cato Cloud Network, enterprises can cut cost and complexity out of their IT infrastructures while improving security posture and enterprise agility," adds Gur Shatz, CTO of Cato Networks. "The Cato Cloud is currently in production with our first global, multi-site corporation and we are running concurrent pilots for different use cases across dozens of organizations."
About Cato Networks
Cato Networks provides organizations with a software-defined and cloud-based secure enterprise network. Cato delivers a single networking and security platform that securely connects all enterprise locations, people and data. The Cato Cloud reduces MPLS connectivity costs, eliminates branch appliances, provides direct, secure internet access everywhere, and seamlessly integrates mobile users and cloud infrastructures to the enterprise network. Based in Tel Aviv, Israel, Cato Networks was founded in 2015 by cybersecurity luminary Shlomo Kramer, who previously cofounded Check Point Software Technologies and Imperva, and Gur Shatz, who previously cofounded Incapsula. For more information, visit http://www.catonetworks.com and Follow us on Twitter: @CatoNetworks.
About Greylock Partners
Greylock Partners backs entrepreneurs who are building disruptive, market-transforming consumer and enterprise software companies. We invest in companies that define new markets, including Airbnb, AppDynamics, Cloudera, Docker, Dropbox, Facebook, LinkedIn, Medium, Nextdoor, Palo Alto Networks and Workday.
About Singtel Innov8
Singtel Innov8, the venture capital arm of the Singtel Group, invests in and partners with innovative tech startups worldwide. It has a fund size of US$250 million and its own set of decision making, approval and funding processes. Beyond funding, Singtel Innov8 is a gateway for startups to tap on the resources and expertise of the Singtel Group, while enabling the Group to gain access to emerging technologies. Singtel Innov8 focuses its investments on technologies and solutions that can lead to quantum changes in network capabilities, next generation devices, digital services and enablers to enhance customer experience. Headquartered in Singapore, Singtel Innov8 also has offices in San Francisco and Tel Aviv. For more info, visit innov8.singtel.com or follow @singtelinnov8 on Twitter.
About USVP
U.S. Venture Partners (USVP) is a leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm, partnering with entrepreneurs to transform their ideas into world-changing companies. USVP has invested in over 400 companies spanning three decades, including: Box, Castlight Health, Check Point Software, Concur, GoPro, Guidewire Software, Imperva, InsideSales.com, Intersect ENT, OncoMed, SanDisk, Sun Microsystems, Trunk Club, Trusteer, and Yammer. We focus on early-stage start-ups that transform Enterprise Software, IT Security, Consumer Internet, Mobile, E-Commerce, Healthcare, and IT-enabled healthcare services. The USVP team consists of former entrepreneurs, technologists, corporate executives, and financial professionals that assist with strategy, scaling, team building, product and business development.
Follow USVP: @usvp_
About Aspect Ventures
Aspect Ventures partners with entrepreneurs at the ground floor to help build businesses and support them through the entire arc of their growth. We invest in companies that are leveraging data analytics and embracing interconnectivity to create new digital approaches to Marketplaces, Work, Security and Health IT. We founded Aspect to combine the best of what we've learned -- across 100+ Seed and Series A investments -- with a fresh perspective to do things better. We work together with entrepreneurs as their active advisors, board members and partners to help them grow their companies from inception to standalone, sustainable businesses. For more information, please visit www.aspectventures.com. Follow Aspect Ventures @AspectVC.
*Gartner, Hype Cycle for Infrastructure Protection, 2016, Greg Young, 06 July 2016
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